the dean of one of the great chinese law schools was visiting me in boston, we went to dinner, and he said can i ask you something very, very personal. and i said, of course, you can ask anything. he said, no, this is a really private, intimate question. so i was trying to figure out, is this salary? [laughter] is it religion? is it politics, is it sex? what is it? he leans across the table and says, professor alford, this separation of powers business, separation of powers, you don't really believe it, do you? [laughter] he was rather amazed when i told him i thought it was a noble ideal. anyways, as aspiring as our example in the u.s. may be, i also think we owe it to the chinese and chinese reformers in particular to encourage them to familiarize themselves with an even broader range of hostilities. wonderfully with a conference that was referred to. prior to the financial crisis of 2008 but still to some degree today, many chinese reformers have tended to focus chiefly on the u.s. often to the exclusion of other models, drawn no doubt as much by our power as our ideals and ideas.